This invention relates to shell loaders.
In one class of shell loaders, a shell holder is adapted to receive shells or casings and is mounted to a carriage which is movable in a vertical direction. A handle is connected to a toggle drive mechanism to raise and lower the carriage as the handle is pivoted between substantially vertical and horizontal positions. At the top of the motion of the carriage and at the bottom, the shells contact a tool station which operates on the shells to refinish and load them.
In a prior art type of loader of this class, the repriming cap is manually positioned in a fixed location to be received by the shell in its downward movement toward the base. The prior art method has the disadvantage of being slow and requiring an operator to correctly position the cap for the repriming operation.
In another prior art loader of this class, a shell holder is driven by a ram or piston which includes a slot having a primer arm mounted to it by a lost motion mechanism. The lost motion mechanism moves the primer arm to a position for receiving a primer in a chute when the ram moves the shell upwardly to deprime it and moves the primer arm against the bottom of the shell to insert the primer when the ram is moved downwardly. The lost motion mechanism includes a pivot pin mounted within the slot and the slot extends from the shell holder to a longitudinally offset location on the ram. The primer arm is releasably engaged with the pivot pin within the slot and oriented by the curvature of the slot to align the primer cap holder with the center of the bottom of the shell.
This type of prior art primer works well on a one-shell reloader but has certain disadvantages such as: (1) it is mounted to a piston or ram rather than to a carriage with an automatic indexing mechanism for progressive operation on a plurality of shells; (2) it is relatively complicated and expensive; and (3) it requires a complicated mechanism to mount it to the ram for small units such as shell loaders.